This confession was very fortunate for the Sergeant. It obviated all necessity to produce the person of a certain Ethel Wilkinson, a labourer’s daughter, who had actually seen the murder committed, had told the Sergeant all about it, and had pointed out to him the clues which had so won the Chief Constable’s admiration—a series of facts which the Sergeant had prudently concealed. Ethel Wilkinson, who had no wish to be mixed up in such a sordid affair and help to put a rope round a fellow-creature’s neck, had been grateful to the Sergeant for keeping her name out of it and had never breathed a word of her knowledge from that day; the Sergeant had been no less grateful to Ethel Wilkinson. The Chief Constable, sharing in the general gratitude, had come to the conclusion that he had misjudged a very sound man and had caused the Sergeant to be promoted, by way of some small reward, to the rank of Inspector. Ever since then Inspector Cottingham had naturally been the district’s sage and authority where the science of criminal detection was concerned. He was now once more in his element, trying to obtain something remotely approaching a connected story from the two chief witnesses. He was an optimistic man, and he had no doubt that somebody must have seen the murder committed once more. Guy’s story he had heard already. That was simplicity itself. Guy had been summoned away immediately after dinner by a note purporting to come from an old friend of his who had just taken a house a few miles away. He had gone off at once in the car with his wife, and after spending nearly three hours in trying to find the house had come to the conclusion that the address did not exist at all. He had thereupon returned. In the course of his journeying the note had most unfortunately been thrown away in disgust. Mrs. Nesbitt had corroborated these particulars and then retired, somewhat hurriedly (but that was hardly surprising), to bed. Cynthia, in fact, had chosen the path of prudence rather than bravado. Otherwise there would have now been three ditherers in the drawing-room instead of two. Cynthia was very decidedly alarmed—and she was a poor liar. “Be quiet, you, Graves!” bellowed Inspector Cottingham, rounding suddenly with portentous authority upon his underling. “I’ve heard what you’ve got to say, and the less you talk about it the better; it don’t do you much credit, when all’s said and done. And how on earth do you expect me to understand what this gentleman’s trying to tell me, if you will keep on about that blessed cupboard? I’m sick and tired of that cupboard.” Inspector Cottingham was also a little jealous of that cupboard, but he could hardly tell a subordinate that. The cupboard, Inspector Cottingham could not help feeling, was the place where somebody ought to have contrived that he himself should have been the whole time, if the game had been played according to its proper rules.